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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   3483 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm on Meyer's In Defense of Freedom. It's an effective statement of right-libertarian ideas, and surprisingly critical of Kirkian conservatism. Meyer's defense of freedom and reason is in large part against "New Conservatism's" defining of freedom as the freedom to do one's duty. It's surprising considering that the system related to his name is "fusionism." I'll have to dust off my Kirk sometime.

Just finished Feynman’s autobiography. What a guy! You know a guy is being honest in his autobiography when half the book is filled with memories of blond babes and tits, and the other half is about him solving this or that very difficult physics problem.

Seconded. It really is a hoot. If the guy had been alive today his YouTube channel would be popping.

Seconded. It really is a hoot. If the guy had been alive today his YouTube channel would be popping.

Not really - he wasn't a self-promoter in that way. SYJ happened because Leighton and Sands made it happen, not because Feynman wanted to do the work of writing a memoir.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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